Chapter 1
I did like the house, really, I did. I just wish that it was some other color than pee yellow, raw egg yolk yellow, my mom’s aged wedding dress type of smokey yellow. But that’s the color he chose, pretty sure it was just because it was on sale at Home Depot. I would rather it have been a sunset pink swirled with orange cream, and soft baby blue shutters, instead of naked windows and caulk trailing out from the seams like a spit string. I did like the house, though. The house was like cottage cheese and dry bread, because that is what we ate in there when the bugs swarmed outside, threatening my sister and I’s wellbeing with their humming and hissing as they flung themselves through the air by our miniature ears.
Both of us were miniature back then, the little house a perfect place for the lunches we made ourselves, or rather, whatever we could snag quickly from the chrome fridge or the deep cave of the pantry. We were too proud to ask Dad for any, we just took. Molly and I would eat slices of the bread torn with our little fists and forget about the dairy dishes, leaving them to spoil in an hour it was so hot. Dad tried to install a fan, but he had to open a window to sling the cord out to the carriage house, and from that to the regular house, and the open window brought the praying mantis, the peanut smelling lady bugs, or a parade of black ants. I didn’t mind; those were my friends.
When Molly was napping or on a play date or at school, I was outside the little house, pulling up weeds and throwing them over my shoulder like spilled salt. I would wipe the grime off my forehead with a hairless pudgy arm and stand wide with authority, as if to say, this is my garden, this bald patch of land. This is my house, this tiny pee colored cottage, it is just for me. Until my sister gets back from school, then I must play husband and hunt wild game in the compost pile behind the rotten fence. But for right now, it is just me in this country, on this land, it is just me.
